soil at the base of the tower and attempt to climb over one another—so many snakes that the ground itself disappears, lost beneath their squirming, coiling bodies.
At the center stands the man, his arms now outstretched, his eyes still closed, his fingers still twitching. Bram cannot help but think of a conductor and his orchestra, each instrumentalist following his baton. All of this activity is taking place in complete silence, Bram aware of nothing but the sound of his own breathing.
Behind him, the odor of newly turned earth drifts from behind the door. This rank perfume of the grave is all too familiar to him now and he can only imagine its source here. Then he hears the loud grunt of a beast of some kind followed by the shrill laughter of a little girl, both also coming from behind that door.
The last rose he placed there is now shriveled up and dead, and his basket is empty; he had placed the last two on the windowsills in order to keep the man, this Dracul, from entering. He considers moving only one, but knows that is probably exactly what this man wants him to do—free the window and allow him entrance into this place.
The odor grows worse, and Bram tries to shield his nostrils with the sleeve of his shirt.
Around the frame of the door, the last of the paste dries right before his eyes and crumbles to the stone floor. A dark muck begins to seep out through the crack between the foot of the door and the floor itself, a sour-smelling mess teeming with maggots and wiggling worms. Bram pulls off his coat and tries to stem the grotesque flow, but it somehow moves around his blockade, impossibly climbing over his coat, into every crease. Bram pulls away in disgust.
He returns to the window and looks down.
The man is watching him yet again, a broad grin on his face, the ground around him still alive with slithering snakes. He raises his long arms above his head and points to the open window.
The stone walls of the tower, covered as they are with vines and errant foliage, centuries worth of vegetation attempting to scale the ancient fa?ade, become the snakes’ destination as they begin to slip over the unfettered growth. First just testing, then becoming more bold, they slowly creep up the side of the structure. Where vines and foliage do not reach, the snakes, twisting and churning their bodies over one another, keep climbing, gaining inch after inch.
Bram tugs at the shutter, and the wood becomes dust at his touch, the result, he has no doubt, of some evil spell cast by the man below.
The man below closes his fingers into a fist, and the creature behind the door slams into the oak with a tremendous force. Filthy muck shoots out from all the edges, spraying across the room. Then it begins to drip from the top of the door, running down over the wood and the corroded metal lock.
Bram runs back to his leather satchel and dumps out its contents. He has no more holy water, no more blessed host. Nothing left with which to defend himself. He plucks one of the crosses from the wall and brandishes it in his left hand.
Outside, the snakes keep climbing, so close that Bram can hear their angry hisses as their thin forked tongues flick between their ever-ready fangs.
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
17 August 1868, 5:12 p.m.—“What is it?” Vambéry asked from behind me.
I ducked deeper into the firebox and looked up. “There is a ladder here embedded in the chimney stones.”
Vambéry squeezed in alongside me and he, too, glanced up. “I see nothing. Hold on—” He disappeared and returned with a lit candle in hand.
I reached up and gripped my fingers around the ladder’s first rung. “Here, do you see?”
He raised the flickering candle. Stones protruded every few feet in a zigzag pattern from the top of the firebox to what appeared to be another fireplace on the floor above. The chimney was large enough to accommodate me standing up, and I rose to my full height. With the satchel slung over my shoulder, I began to climb.